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Postpartum
She makes a creature from bits of old wishes andby Dianne Rees dreams of a better life. She takes his skin from moonlight, his hair from blades of grass tipped sideways after a rain. His eyes are her eyes, filled with all the things she’s seen. His nose is carved from a mountain’s daring edge. His lips are from a stone cherub sitting in a graveyard, untouched by lost hopes, dusted with the softness of a flower petal – he needs to look human after all. His heart beats are waves crashing against her shore. She calls him “boy” and “son.” She tells him, “I made you. I cloned you from my egg and ancient DNA. There’s no one else inside you but me. None of those recursive mistakes that could rob you of your strength, make you want impossible things. You are nothing but possible, stitched together with only my dreams.” She is triumphant. Until he draws breath. Then the reality of him steals over her. His hair is dun-colored. His eyes are weak and watery. His face is red and blotchy, distorted with his hungry cries. His mouth is ravenous, his hands scuttling like crab claws over her rocky terrain. He’s afraid of every thing she is not afraid of - of grass, of moonlight and ocean. He finds beauty in all the things she’s lost, hilarity in all the things that make her wail and scream. “You are no boy of mine,” she curses him in the grocery store as he sits under tumbled packets of candy bars, grinning at her toothlessly, ancient mouth filled with baby teeth. “It’s just a stage they go through. It will pass,” she hears an old woman say who's come up behind her. She draws breath, her own breath, so separate from his now, and she starts to stack the candy bars one by one, tears streaming down her face as he calls to her - “Momma.” |
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